My 2011 Suburban Park Prospecting results...

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So at the start of october last year I decided to shell out a few clams for an older 2nd hand metal detector to do the park scene.

2595_x-terra30.jpg


I picked up a Minelabs Xterra 30 through a forum I'm a member of, which was released in 2006 as the flagship 'coin and relic' specific metal detector. I only paid a couple hundred bucks for it and decided to give it a go.

Well, 3 months on I have to say it was a great little investment.

I did a total of 25 hunts in Sydney suburban parks (over October - December) near where I live and here's the results :

$430 in goldies ($1 and $2 coins)
$42 in silver moderns (5c to 50c)
78 Full Pennies & 36 Half Pennies
28 Silver pre-decimal coins (8 Florins, 5 Shillings, 8 Sixpence & 7 Threepence)
~200 brown buggers (1c and 2c coins)
2 x Sterling silver rings
1 x 18k gold diamond ring
1 x 9ct / 925sterling pendant and sterling chain
7 Foreign coins & a handful of smaller relics (buttons etc), plus a handful of metal I *think* could be precious, but no way to confirm yet.

(click for larger images)

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It's not exactly the sort of cash you can retire on or quit your fulltime job for, but you can certainly get enough to cover your fuel costs and you can get a little more gold/silver/copper for your stack with just a little time investment and exercise. Great for those of us on a very limited investment budget!

You also learn some history as you go (as research plays a big part before you go detecting) which is fun as well. I know a LOT more local history of my area than I did before I started this hobby and it's been quite interesting to have a chat with interested people when they wander by. I've even managed to pick up a few WW2 buttons and relics in my travels which is great.

I also managed to shed a full pants size in the last 3 months doing it too, so I'm doubly chuffed!

Anyway, I've already made a start on my 2012 season and will hopefully upgrade to a 'big boy' coin and relic detector to chase deeper targets and perhaps hit the gold fields later this year. My current machine is really only a 'starter' unit and won't do gold nugget detecting or beaches, but for the bucks I paid I'm more than satisfied with the results.

Hope you all enjoy the piccies... maybe it might encourage a few of you to take up a hobby like this on the side. It's been fun! :D
 
Lol, if I got a 1930 I'd be having kittens I think.

But my heart stops every time you dig up a Penny... like you said, you never know!
 
auspm said:
Lol, if I got a 1930 I'd be having kittens I think.

But my heart stops every time you dig up a Penny... like you said, you never know!
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Well done & good outdoor exercise.

Try church yards & boneyards.

Do you have to dig deep?
 
That's fantastic!

Well done - so you are almost breaking even on the clams outlaid?
 
boneyard said:
Try church yards & boneyards.

Do you have to dig deep?
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Depends on the ground. Harder areas don't have as much sinking, so coins are found close to the surface.

Most parks have a 'clay' layer which sits anywhere from 6" down to a foot or more. Coins and relics don't generally settle below that, but rather rest just above it because it's so dense.

Most surfaces sink by about 1mm a year on average, so 100 year old finds are down to about 10cm down just on raw average, but because of the weight of coinage, they usually go a fair amount lower.

Most of my pennies and silvers are about 6" down - most of the modern stuff is usually an inch or two near the surface.

There's actually been plenty of finds for me where I didn't even have to dig at all, just part the top layer of grass. You cannot see the surface stuff through the grass, but if you know the coin is there, you just part it and viola. Very easy.

As you can see, people lose those $2 coins a LOT as they're so small. I've gotten over $300 in $2 coins alone in 3 months which is really cool.

My detector (even being as old as it is) can easily discriminate out all the iron based targets, but I still get countless bottle tops and pull tabs in my travels. Of this lot laid out here, I've probably dug 4 or 5 to one in 'junk'.

Once you learn to dig a proper plug and not kill the grass or leave holes, park rangers actually love you as a responsible detectorist will take away all the metallic junk that council lawnmowers will generally chew up, leave on the surface and create a danger to park goers. I've actually been approached by a couple over the last 3 months and had a chat with them, they're more than happy for me to be there when I show them my 'junk bag' of garbage I invariably pick up and toss in the bin on the way out.

It's really a great hobby for a number of reasons, I'm just deciding whether to keep stacking those goldies and cash them in for a 'good' detector later on (About $1800 for the best model out - the Minelabs 'Etrac') or to perhaps bank the cash and then buy silver with it to add to my stack.

Decisions, decisions! ;)

Bah, it's all fun. For the moment I'll just keep putting the goldies aside and decide later on.
 
Ag said:
That's fantastic!

Well done - so you are almost breaking even on the clams outlaid?
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the 18k diamond ring alone was worth more than double my outlay.

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That's after I bought the detector, a pinpointer and digging tool.

Mind you, rings are not as common in the park scene as say the beach, so I got very lucky with this particular find.

But I do get a lot, LOT more coins (which is what I'm mostly afteranyway).

So yeah, I'm well in front so far ;)
 
Funnily enough I was at the beach today with an Xterra 705 - nothing but junk. Was at Elwood beach which gets thrashed pretty hard by detectors.

Best day on a beach was $40... at Cape Leveque in the Kimberleys of all places. Campers losing $2 coins in the beach huts where you camp - we detected all of the empty huts and got enough money for a jerrycan of petrol at Kimberley prices :)
 
Anthony said:
How does a pin pointer work?
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The coil on a detector is fairly large - almost as large as a dinner plate on some models. Mine is smaller, but still a decent size.

when you detect a target and dig down to it, you cannot get the detector coil in the hole (unless you dig something ridiculously large) to find *exactly* where the find is.

The pinpointer I use (and almost every park detector uses) is a model made by Garret called the Pinpointer pro.

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It's a simple 9v battery operated unit that (when switched on) will make beeping sounds and vibrate, getting faster and stronger the closer you put the tip near a potential target. So when you've dug your hole, you pop the pinpointer in the whole and flick it on and it'll basically get you all the way to touching the target.

These little units are so damn usefull, they're almost an essential buy if you're doing detecting in the parks.

Here's a clip by one of the guys on a detecting forum I'm a member of that gives you an idea of how it all works...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5QvRnY4eSw[/youtube]

I also own and use the same digging tool in this vid (which almost everyone also uses because it's so damn good) - the Lesche Digging tool
 
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7jmdWLYB4I[/youtube]


Dunno why the video is back to front but --- meh
 
goldpelican said:
Funnily enough I was at the beach today with an Xterra 705 - nothing but junk.
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The 705 is about 5 models ahead of mine (Xterra 30, Xterra 50, 305, 505, 705 then Etrac)

Did you get the stock model 705 GP or did you get the Gold pack? One reason why I really like the 705 is the fact you can swap coils on it. Mine is about as 'stock' as you can get and doesn't even allow for a manual ground balance, but I did take a hard look at the 705 because it can easily do beaches/parks and gold fields with the one unit, especially if you have the extra coil for gold.

I do focus on the parks though because when people think 'metal detecting' they automatically think beach or gold fields. As my results above show, the parks often get ignored... suits me! ;)

Chances are though I'll simply skip the 705 and go either straight to a Sov GT or the Etrac straight up next.
 
Came with an extra coil - its on "permanent loan" from the father-in-law - will need to do some research on it. Much nicer to use than the old Whites detector I had - it died.
 
I was using a GPX 4500 6mths ago. No Gold but found a few interesting coins and a WWII Oz army silver button off a uniform. My mate has found a few gold nuggets with his GPX 5000. Just starting out so i'm sure he will find some nice ones in the future. I do know of one spot that almost guarantees a nugget in W.A.



Scorp
 
Scorpion75 said:
I was using a GPX 4500 6mths ago. No Gold but found a few interesting coins and a WWII Oz army silver button off a uniform. My mate has found a few gold nuggets with his GPX 5000. Just starting out so i'm sure he will find some nice ones in the future. I do know of one spot that almost guarantees a nugget in W.A.



Scorp
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A 5000 pretty much guarantees a nugget in any gold bearing areas.I've picked up gold every time I've been out.
 
Yeah there worth every cent. You will find gold with any gold detector in the area i was talking about. The nuggets seem to keep popping up. I'm in a exploration company close by and want to detect there one day. Once I get a section 20A permit approved of course.



Scorp
 
Scorpion75 said:
Yeah there worth every cent. You will find gold with any gold detector in the area i was talking about. The nuggets seem to keep popping up. I'm in a exploration company close by and want to detect there one day. Once I get a section 20A permit approved of course.



Scorp
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I've heard that some mining companys in WA will let you detect on their leases. is this right? and if so ,where do you start?
 
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